15 Years After 9/11, the TSA is Still Falling Short
James Petrovic approached the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at Chicago's O'Hare airport. The 60-year-old had just landed on a flight from his hometown Detroit on Aug. 10. He'd seen something and needed to say something.
"While I was on my flight, I was going to do some work and noticed I had my gun in my bag," he said, according to a TSA report shared with U.S. News.
Not just a gun: Petrovic was packing a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver loaded with four bullets and another in the chamber -- roughly a pound and a half of lethal metal in his carry-on that went undetected by TSA screeners in Detroit. That he turned himself in is the only reason anyone found out.
The incident was never made public by the TSA. Petrovic was charged with a misdemeanor, and his court date is in October, according to the Chicago Police Department, which arrested him. The TSA says a screener in Detroit was reassigned while the incident undergoes review.
"TSA will take appropriate corrective measures if warranted based on the results of the review," the agency says in a statement. "Traveler security is TSA's first priority and we remain intensely focused on our important mission."
The security lapse, though, seems anything but unusual.
A show-stopping leak in May 2015 revealed that mock explosives and guns slipped past screeners 95 percent of the time in undercover tests at dozens of the nation's busiest airports . A review by the TSA's inspector general a month later found the agency failed to identify 73 aviation workers with potential links to terrorism. In testimony before House lawmakers this spring, TSA executives and whistleblowers described a toxic culture of retaliation and recrimination among the agency's highest ranks. And while the TSA spent $878 million through 2012 on specialized training to detect travelers who seem to be acting suspiciously, an audit the next year found it had yet to implement any measure for determining if the program is effective.
"It is excellent security theater," says Philip Baum, editor of the journal Aviation Security International and the author of a history on airline hijackings and bombings. "But it's highly questionable how effective it really is in preventing the next attack."
The TSA keeps the results of its airport security audits secret -- the better, it says, to keep terrorists unaware of which places are weakest. Contacted by U.S. News, the agency declined to make any officials available. After the statement on the gun, the TSA did not return multiple phone and email requests for comment.
In that void there are only the public statements from the agency's administrator, Peter Neffenger, who insists that TSA's nearly 60,000 employees "join together every day to execute a complex, challenging mission," as he did in congressional testimony in April. But the question remains: 15 years since the blue-shirted ranks of the Transportation Security Administration rose from the ashes of 9/11, the role of securing America's skies seized from private contractors to be consolidated under the newly minted Department of Homeland Security, how well is the TSA safeguarding U.S. aviation? Can we even know?
Experts say yes -- but they paint a picture that's far from reassuring.
"The execution by management and personnel has, from every measure of evaluation, been a failure," says Anthony Roman, a security consultant and president of Roman & Associates, an investigations and risk-management firm. "But rather surprisingly and conversely, there have been no successful bombings of aircraft, no successful hijackings. So in a practical sense, the program's been a success when by every measure it should not have been."
So how long can that record stay perfect, especially against enemies that still seem determined to attack not just airlines, but airports themselves, as happened in Istanbul in June and Brussels in March? For if and when the next attack comes, recent history suggests the consequences will prove yet more dire, and more deadly, than they already seem.
"Everything we've done," says aviation security consultant John Huey, "how we approach security, being in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's all a result of a failure of airport security in 2001."
Dial-In Every two weeks, from the spring of 2013 through the spring of 2016, top TSA officials at the nation's busiest airports joined a 30-minute conference call with the agency's then-chief of security, Kelly Hoggan, assistant administrator for the office of security operations.
"You know what we'd talk about? We'd talk about wait times, and how wait times are too long, and what are we going to do about it?" says Andrew Rhoades, an assistant federal security director for TSA at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. "We'd shift resources between airports at an enormous cost -- to do what? Not to defeat the threat, but to reduce wait times."
Others at TSA corroborated Rhoades' account. "Not once did Hoggan or anyone else raise security as a prime concern or even mention security," one recounted, asking not to be named because the official is still employed at TSA. "If you had a five-minute wait time, you were on the phone having to explain it."
Wait times are not entirely irrelevant: Large crowds of people make an attractive target. They can also undercut the agency's credibility, reinforcing its reputation for inefficiency, rather than as a security force to be respected.
But insiders say the emphasis on wait times suggested something larger was at work: While the administrator at the time, John Pistole, came from the FBI, many of the TSA's executives, including Hoggan, hailed not from counterterrorism jobs, but customer-service positions with the airlines and airports. And just about everyone hoped to avoid being chewed out in public on Capitol Hill, for few issues make as easy a punching bag for lawmakers as long security lines.
"The managers are more worried about wait times, and they're putting the pressure on front-line employees to get people through the line, and if they make a mistake they're fired," says Mark Livingston, once the second in command in TSA's intelligence office and currently a senior risk analysis officer.
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Dissent was ruthlessly punished. Ed Goodwin, an outspoken but respected leader in Florida, a former state trooper caring for his elderly parents and with a daughter in high school, was abruptly reassigned to Iowa in May 2014, Rhoades testified in April. Two months earlier, Ken Kasprisin, a former TSA administrator, found himself suddenly reassigned from Minneapolis to Alaska.
Rhoades and Livingston have filed their own complaints with the Office of Special Counsel accusing superiors of retaliation: Rhodes alleges in his complaint that he was reassigned for challenging how the agency relocated officers. In his House testimony, he said he was also targeted because superiors mistakenly believed he'd leaked information to the media. Livingston, who filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, says he was demoted and reassigned for reporting another supervisor's sexual harassment of a female employee.
"All the people who will do the right thing, who will stand up and say, 'No, I'm not going to rush people through like a cattle car,' those are the people who were pushed out of the agency," says Rhoades, who testified about the reassignments before the House oversight committee in April. "All you're left with is sycophants."
And that's far more than a mere morale problem, says Livingston, who testified alongside Rhoades at April's hearing: "If you're more fearful of your supervisor than a terrorist, no one is going to say anything."
Changes
For all the criticism, there are some things the TSA is doing better. It's installed more advanced technology to screen checked and carry-on bags, and it's implemented centralized training for entry-level screeners. The PreCheck program introduced in 2011, while not flawless, is widely regarded as a success, allowing low-risk passengers to undergo less screening and in turn freeing up more officers to check everyone else. Even the behavioral detection program is seen as a positive step, even if its effectiveness remains unclear.
"The TSA probably does a better job than most of America gives them credit for. They have some of the same challenges that any large organization has as far as consistency with staff and training," says Lindsey McFarren, owner of McFarren Aviation Consulting and a former assistant general manager at TSA in 2008. "The vast majority of people who are there are competent and do want to do their job well."
And there are still the questions that don't have easy answers, the ones that make the rounds after every airport or airline attack: Should screening checkpoints be moved from inside airport terminals to their entrances or even farther? Can current screening technology detect very small amounts of an explosive?
Even seemingly straightforward solutions, like installing locked cockpit doors to prevent midair hijackings, can have unpredictable consequences: The door prevented passengers and crew members from overtaking Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz, who purposely flew the aircraft and all 149 onboard into the side of a mountain in March 2015. The sound of the captain pounding on the door, trying to break it down, was captured by the black box recorder.
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"Each year gets better, but we should be much more advanced and more secure than we are today," says Rick Withers, former TSA deputy federal security director in the U.S. Virgin Islands from 2002-2003, and a consulting practice lead with Triad Consulting.
By last fall, it was hard to imagine an agency more derided than the TSA -- including even the IRS. A poll released in October found 87 percent of Americans were unhappy with the TSA, and barely 10 percent had confidence it was effective at its job.
By the spring, as security lines stretched ever longer, operators of some of the nation's largest airports -- Atlanta, Newark, LaGuardia, JFK -- were threatening to privatize security screening, expanding a version of the model used pre-9/11, one that's still employed at close to two dozen airports from Punta Gorda Airport in Florida to San Francisco International.
All the while, the TSA's top executives were awarding and enriching themselves: As many as nine top officials were awarded four- and five-figure bonuses, despite the interminable waits and the flunked security audits.
Hoggan, the agency's head of security, quietly took home a total of $90,000 through 2013 and 2014 atop a $183,300 salary, the bonus meted out in roughly $10,000 increments that largely circumvented reporting requirements. Only after House lawmakers castigated the agency at a hearing in April was Hoggan stripped of his position -- but even now, he's still on TSA's payroll. Others who collected the bonuses are also still at their posts.
"The American public would be absolutely horrified," Rhoades says. "Why are people getting bonuses for failed performance? It just doesn't make sense."
TSA's Future
Pistole, tapped to lead the TSA in October 2010, retired at the end of 2014. He's now president of Anderson University, a private Christian liberal arts college in Indiana. At TSA, his post has been assumed by Vice Adm. Neffenger, who has pledged to clean up the agency's senior management and rein in the bonus payments. The agency is rolling out so-called Innovation Lanes, a kind of E-ZPass for pedestrians, allowing them to be screened while walking. The TSA's also won more funding from Congress, allowing it to hire more screeners and cut wait times.
The conference calls -- now known as Operations Situation Reports -- have changed, too. Every morning, top TSA officials at the nation's airports raise concerns about security, warn others of glitches, and coordinate with the airport and airline officials who also listen in. Wait times are rarely discussed.
Senior staffers acknowledge Neffenger inherited "a mess," as one insider describes it. Some are cautiously optimistic he'll be able to implement lasting improvements.
"The people who have been creating problems are the same people who have been creating problems for years, and the current administration has put those people in a box," one official says. "But there needs to be a culture established, a level of accountability, for after the departure of this leadership team."
Alan Neuhauser covers law enforcement and criminal justice for U.S. News & World Report. He also contributes to STEM and Healthcare of Tomorrow, and previously reported on energy and the environment. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at aneuhauser@usnews.com.
